Funds available for a sound upgrade - digital mixer or aviom?

[mgallop]

Hi,

My church has $10,000-ish funds available for a much needed sound upgrade. Initially, the idea was to purchase an aviom system for the main purpose of taking that duty away from the FOH operator. (Too much screaming back and forth between the band and the board way up in the balcony, and it's never quite right.. AND it seems to change often.) However, in the course of getting a quote for the avioms, the option of a digital mixing board was brought to our attention. Of course, the company selling all of this wants us to do both the board and the avioms, but, upon researching the board they quoted us (The Yamaha LS9-32) it seems to me that, by using the ipad control feature, we can still get in-ear monitor functionality with each musician having their custom mix.

I'm aware that with this configuration, only one person will be able to adjust the settings at at time, all from the same ipad/laptop, instead of each person having their own mixer. BUT.. I don't think we would generally be that picky about it once we 1) get a mix each person personally likes and 2) will be able to save our mixes for recall later.

I have two questions about this: 1) is what I'm suggesting actually technically possible with this board (considering I'll also need to purchase the wireless headphones and an ipad)? and, 2) would this board be the better investment at this point, knowing that our board operators are not nightly trained and could benefit from the save/recall features of the board.

Thanks for your feedback. I am a music director at a new church and only have enough knowledge about sound to be dangerous. I am in the process of learning more and getting out A/V coordinator trained also.

Thanks!
m.j.

[churchtech007]

what is your sound company's reasoning for going to a digital board?
do you do multiple services? is your analog board going bad? Do you have a different band each week with little setup time?
If it's just a purchase for the sake of "going digital" I'd go with the in-ears every time!

Also, if I were you I'd look at the Roland system, I'd take them over the Aviom system any day.

[mgallop]

The reasoning was due to the complaints that things always get changed. There is a rotating crew of about 5 volunteers who do the sound. The two services on Sunday morning are identical/blended and there is a contemporary service on Wednesday night with different musicians. Things always seem to get changed between rehearsals and services, and our operators aren't skilled enough to know what's wrong very quickly.

Needless to say, the biggest need we have is training. However, when we do training, I want to be sure we want to do it on this board or not.

[Paris MkVI]

Beyond the obvious control of personal mixes, the other value to Avioms is "silent stage" - eliminating all amps, removing "stage sound" from the total room mix. If you have an issue with sound stage driving the room and muddying the mix, the Avioms may make your existing mix desk "sound better", so to speak.

If you do not go with silent stage, the Avioms will only do so much for you.

[Brad Weber]

Originally Posted by mgallop

Needless to say, the biggest need we have is training. However, when we do training, I want to be sure we want to do it on this board or not.

All the gear in the world won't help if it isn't applied properly. Training is a critical component no matter what you do.


A few questions about what you have and are considering...

What do you currently have for your mixer? Did you have any specific concept for what signals you would provide to the Aviom system and how you would do that?

What do you currently do for monitors? Would you be switching to all to in-ears or using some combination of in-ears and floor monitors? How open are you musicians and others on stage to in-ears?

How technically competent are your musicians? The Yamaha StageMix app would let an iPad wirelessly mix the aux mixes using sends on faders but they'd have to select the sends on faders mode and then select which send or mix bus is active. The iPad app also provides control of the channel on and cue functions, the channel and mix bus EQ, the headamp controls, the main mix, the scene recall and so on. I don't think there is currently a way to limit access to those functions, so if you're having problems with things changing and operators not being skilled enough to figure out what is wrong when there is a problem then putting that kind of control in the hands of the musicians at the stage might not be the best thing unless they are more technically competent then the people running the mixer.

Are you in a hurry? There are a number of new 'entry level' digital consoles being introduced around or below the price of an LS9. If possible, you may want to wait and see what happens with some of those before making a decision.

I always find the digital console and non-technical operator relationship to have two sides. Functionality such as scene recall can help greatly in getting to a known or default condition, which can be great with less experienced operators. And some consoles let you limit what is available to certain operators. On the other side, if something does go wrong then the less technical operator may have more difficulty realizing what they have done and addressing it on a digital console.